


The Mysterious Axeman’s Jazz

by Ellajane2255



Category: Lockwood & Co. - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Discord Server Secret Santa 2020, Explosions, Historical AU - 1920s, Holly is a chemist working for the mob, Lucy is a speakeasy barkeep, Mentions of Prostitution, New Orleans, The Mob, There are no male characters in this fic lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28310859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellajane2255/pseuds/Ellajane2255
Summary: I do not own Lockwood & Co.For WolfjawsWriter!“What the hell do they teach you at those goddamn women’s colleges?!”
Relationships: Lucy Carlyle & Holly Munro
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	The Mysterious Axeman’s Jazz

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WolfjawsWriter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfjawsWriter/gifts).



> For Wolf! This fic is inspired by an AU of her creation, this is my own little spin on that story - I hope you enjoy :)

The house was situated at the heart of New Orleans in Uptown; a Belle Époque mansion, set back from the road and surrounded by a moat of manicured green grass. Nearby trees dripped Spanish moss, and candles in hurricane lamps flickered at regimented intervals down each side of the path. 

All in all, it was a handsome home. 

The same could not be said for the occupants. 

Even from the end of the street, where Holly and Lucy sat in the front seat of a boxy Bentley Speed Six Blue Train, engine idling, the sounds of laughter and raucous jazz music were easily audible from the house. 

They’d been sitting there for nigh on half an hour. Since their arrival, nothing in the street had changed in any way to cause concern. In the windows of neighbouring houses, lights had been switched off, curtains had twitched, fat cats had been hefted off of windowsills and brought inside for the night. 

Holly held the wooden box carefully in her lap, giving the wires and fuses draped around it a final close inspection. 

Lucy checked her wristwatch, before taking a swig from a battered vacuum flask. “We’ll give it another two minutes” 

Holly nodded wordlessly, manipulating a delicate bundle of copper with a pair of tweezers. 

When the two minutes were up, no new guests had arrived, and the street had remained as motionless as before. Lucy downed the remainder of her drink, screwed the lid on tightly, and tossed the flask onto the back seat. “Come on” 

Holly pulled her black bandana up over the lower half of her face, watching as Lucy did the same, before climbing out of the car. She kept the box tucked under her arm, gripping it gently but firmly. 

She’d trained for five years at an elite all-women east coast college to become a chemist, and she was good at her job. That’s why she was so afraid. 

It couldn’t have been more than 200 metres at most, but it seemed like the longest journey Holly had ever made; between the box under her arm with enough volatile home-refined nitroglycerine in it to rip her and Lucy into a billion squishy little pieces, the constant fear of being spotted and brutally gunned down or tortured or tied to a concrete block and hurled into Lake Pontchartrain, or being shot in the back of the head by Lucy because she doubted Holly’s loyalty. 

She was an ex-cop turned speakeasy barkeep. She could kill her six ways through Sunday. 

Somehow, possibly through divine intervention, Holly’s feet found themselves next to the target. 

“It’s a shame, really”, Lucy said, crouching down beside Holly in the road, “I‘ve always wanted a Roadster. Just not one that belongs to an illegal brothel madame. Light it up” 

The car was long and cherry red, open top, with sleek black leather upholstery, and silver and mahogany interior, stretching like a languorous predatory cat between the two girls and the house with the party. 

Holly said nothing; she was too busy getting onto her front and sliding the box beneath the car, not quite halfway along, situated roughly beneath the fuel tank, the fuse trailing away from her knees like a black crack in the concrete. She withdrew her shaking hands, and crossed herself in relief, releasing a breath. 

Lucy handed her a lighter. 

She reached over to take it, but Lucy didn’t release it. Holly looked into her face. 

Above the top of the bandana, Lucy’s eyes were dark and unmoving. From anyone else, the look would have been somewhere between dopey and bemused; from Lucy, it was an unveiled threat. 

_ Don’t fuck this up.  _

The chemist swallowed, and the other girl released the lighter. 

Cupping the lighter against the ground to hide the sparks from any unseen witnesses, she pressed the button, birthing a shower of minute blue and gold stars. The first frayed inch of the fuse turned from pitch to orange and back again. 

They didn’t hang around to see anymore. 

They were halfway across the lawn of a quaint white Colonial mansion when the explosion ripped through the air. 

The air was sucked backwards towards the car, and there was no sound for a fraction of a second, Holly’s blood roaring in her ears; then there was a momentous release of pressure, a noise that seemed to tear her apart from inside, like an unseen tidal wave slamming into her back, hurling her forwards and into the shadows of a virulent shrubbery at the foot of the mansions foundations. Lucy landed beside her not a moment later. 

Fiery puzzle pieces of jagged metal rained down across the street. A forlorn and flaming rubber tire bounced as it hit the pavement and rolled off, colliding with another car and toppling over. 

The reaction from the house opposite was practically instantaneous; streams of people flowed out of the mansion and across the lawn, examining the blazing wreckage of what had once been a very nice car. 

The crowds parted rapidly, and like some sort of unholy Moses, Madame Marissa swept forwards to the head of the assembled mass. 

Like all wealthy widows, she dressed to demonstrate that she was, indeed, a wealthy widow; despite the June humidity, a long black fur coat hung from her shoulders to end about her knees. Beneath it, there were glimpses of a beaded bottle green slip dress, ending below her knees and matching a pair of oriental black silk slippers. 

In one gloved hand she clutched a slender cigarette holder. 

She surveyed the wreckage wordlessly, watching as it belched great gulps of fetid black smoke, talking a long drag from her cigarette. 

Lights appeared in the neighbouring houses, and nervous, curious faces appeared on verandas and galleries, peering down into the street at the flaming hunk of junk that had once been a top of the line automobile. 

The lights in the house behind them came to life, and the two girls sat stock still in the hedge, barely breathing. 

Madame Marissa still hadn’t spoken; even above the groaning and crackling of the wreck, the murmur of the crowds, the distant sound of sirens, her silence was audible. 

Finally, she blew a ring of smoke out from between her red lips, and flicked the cigarette onto the paved ground. 

She crushed it beneath an ornately slippered foot. 

Then she turned and swept back inside, coat swishing around her like the plumage of a darkly feathered bird of paradise. 

The crowds remained assembled for perhaps half an hour as the fire burnt out rapidly. It was hard to measure the passage of time; a fire truck arrived and extinguished the smoldering metal carcass, people began to slowly drift back inside their homes, the party-going rabble followed the procuress inside. 

When the street was dark, and all movement had once again slowly ceased - occurrences such as explosions and gunfire were not uncommon in New Orleans, being a city reeling from prohibition and, for all intents and purposes, being under mob rule - the two girls returned to the car via a long route, trespassing through the manicured back gardens of the row of mansions. 

Back in the car, it seemed that nothing had changed; Lucy’s thermos was still on the back seat. Holly’s spare shoes were in their box on the passenger side floor. 

Lucy entered the car a moment later and sat down. She was silent as she took one last look around the neighbourhood and started the car. 

It was, tragically, necessary to pass the wreck in order to turn the car around at the edge of the street. Holly watched it wordlessly through her window. 

They had barely passed it when there was a second, smaller explosion, (probably the remainder of the gas tank buckling and feeding the flames), somewhere towards the front of the car. 

Lucy floored it. 

They turned sharply at the end of the street, and roared past the rejuvenated flames, crunching glass and warped metal beneath the wheels. 

She swung the car around the end of the street and out onto the wide boulevard. 

The noxious black smoke was still visible in the rear view mirror. 

It wasn’t until they reached the bar - which appeared to be, to the uninitiated eye, a small French restaurant with a terrace above the Mississippi out the back, and a small adjoining storehouse, that they both released breaths they’d been holding since the first explosion. 

A painted wooden sign at the edge of the parking lot read ‘ _ Le Fleur de Mai.’  _ Lucy pulled up beside it, and killed the engine. 

Holly spoke first. 

“Well, I think that went rather-“ 

Lucy interrupted her, turning in her seat to fix her with a stare. 

“What the hell do they teach you at those goddamn women’s colleges?!” 


End file.
